The World's Music Charts

This is the most comprehensive collection of world music chart information
anywhere (that we are aware of). These lists bring together 452,096
individual chart runs (most representing many weekly chart entries, of course)
about the most popular 137,275 songs and 75,841 albums
released since the year 1900. This site combines 222 different data sources,
132 song charts and
90 album charts from
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Eire, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Italy,
Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US
as well as some global and internet based listings to give the songs
and albums that have topped the charts around the world for the last 115 years.
The source data includes all the hits of 32,894 song artists
and 20,169 album artists.

The site lists the top 100 songs and albums from most
years, as well as every song
or album that has been a hit anywhere for the top
1000 artists (including their collaborations).
Every entry includes a complete list of the charts that it featured in, and a complete
list of original sources is provided. There is also a complete list of the songs that were
number 1 for any month from Jan 1940 to Dec 2015 in the
USA, UK and a range of other countries. The site also supplies answers to the questions
of who were the world's greatest
song and
album chart acts of all time,
some informed guesses about the 300 biggest selling
albums of all time and a whole host of other
analysis.

Contacting Us

Any data consolidation task of this size is a constant battle against the errors in
the original sources. The data is continually being expanded to add new charts,
correct issues and identify other interesting ways to look at the information.
This is version "2.6.0010", new versions
are released regularly. If you identify any
errors, or you have charts to contribute you can
contact us.

It should also be noted that the approach taken here is very good for charts that are at least
10 years old, that provides enough time for awards, retrospective charts and sales to be accounted for.
For recent music (since, say 2010) a different approach is required. The site
chart200.com/ (JavaScript is not enabled in your browser so these links won't function) provides a better idea of the top albums, songs and artists
from 2000 up to the end of last month).

Donate: If you feel that this site has
brought value to you then we would ask that you donate to your
local cerebral palsy charity. We have no connection with any
such organisation but they do need your help.

Frequent Questions

There are also a number of pages here that discuss related topics such as
the way that the entries are scored, the source charts, how the artist's
profiles work and other frequently asked questions, such as:

I just discovered your site. +I noticed a question from April 2014 concerninga song from late 63-early 64 with lyrics about a small town girl in a big town
world. +On the off-chance that person reads this, the song he is looking for
is "Big Town Boy" by Canadian singer Shirley Matthews. +Link is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCTdx37QoAg.

1 Sep 2016

side line

There's a line in the song that goes he is standing on the the side line
looking like to

30 Aug 2016

MTV Video Music Awards, a Playground for the Next Generation - WOW!

Hi to all visitors tsort.info forum. I want to share with you the latest news
about MTV Video Music Awards.
Since MTV revived its highest honor the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award
at the network's annual Video Music Awards in 2011, it has gone to Britney
Spears, Justin Timberlake, Beyonce and Kanye West, a lineup of artists who,
from the beginning of their careers, understood the power of a well-executed
music video. That's partly because of their ages: Like MTV, Ms. Spears, Mr.
Timberlake and Beyonce were born in 1981, and Mr. West was born in 1977.
They're old enough to have lived through the era in which MTV dominance was
integral to a pop star's ascendance. Even if the channel's relationship with
music was in decline during the peak of their own careers, they understood its
legacy, and executed top-notch videos accordingly.
Please move topic if forums this was not chosen correctly.

16 Jul 2016

All my respect.

In reading the conversations with many people who seem to lack a third grade
skill of reading your site before posting opinions or subjective, baseless
commentary, you maintain a tact and veer away from personsal atracks (for the
most part unless their ignorance is really begging to be pointed out). Kudos,
to you and all of your colleagues and/or collaborators hard work in sorting
the data and creating a methodology to explain your results.

I think my only suggestion I might give to help is, maybe (and forgive me if I
missed it somewhere on your site), take artist's song data and give a higher
weight so songs that stayed higher on charts longer the normalize the album
data because I feel fairly confident that there is a direct significant
correlation between song success and album sucess. I just think that sucess of
an album (suspicious opinion ahead) due to one song (example, Pornograffitti
by the band Extreme by people looking for the song, "More Than Words" might be
artificially boosting some artists on your scale where it might not be truly
replective or their sucess.

Undoubtedly, certain artist's, like Madonna, I would see no reason for album
data to skew results like an outlier. Maybe weight the time of sucess of
sucessful songs on the album as pre-scale to the album weight.

As with all data outliers will skew results in some area, but you can't just
ignore artist's in you case.

I truly hope you don't take my suggestions in a nefative light. Your team
undertook a huge project and have you results well laid out and explained in
detail.

Again, all my appreciation for all you hard work. Thank you for yourinvestment of time to make short cutter like myself to have a great place to
trust the facts of what I read.

Thank you for the suggestion. It is a topic that we have dicussed between us a few
times, unfortunately the conclusion we have come to is that putting extra weight on
long runs near the top won't work for this data. The reason is that many of the source
charts don't have enough detail available. This is especially true for the earlier
charts and those from the less well represented countries. If we were to restrict
ourselves to only cover the period after, say 1980, or to only deal with the USA &
UK then we have a more detailed look at runs.

Our companion site (http://chart2000.com/) shows what can be done if all the
weekly position data is available. In that case we add up the success
calculated daily to estimate the overall success of songs, albums and artists.
That site only deals with music since 1 Jan 2000, because we have fairly
complete data after that date.

The issue of "other factors" having significant impacts on song and album
sales has always been with us, from Bing Crosby's 1930s radio shows to the
boost in sales for "Purple Rain" in May that followed Prince's death. We
naively believe (and indeed hope) that these things tend to even each other
out.

14 Jun 2016

find a song

In 1950 or l951 I remember hearing this song. It had a lovely melod and a
very nice lyric. No one I know or ask has ever heard it or heard of it. Can
you help me out? I don't know the title (gessing it might be Out of Sight,
Out of Mind). I remember these lines:

Out of sight, out of mind
And I've just about run out of time.
Oh, what a fix I'm in
Since you're out of love with me....

It seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth.....any ideas?
Thanks so much! Mrs. Patsy Eller

The only song (of that era) with that title we have is Five Keys "Out of
Sight, Out of Mind" (1956)

16 May 2016

The Current

Here's a list worth considering. KCMP-FM otherwise known as The Current 89.3in Minneapolis just put out a list of their 893 Essential Albums according to
their listeners.

That looks interesting and seems to have a wide enough range for us to use, except
we can't see the full list anywhere.

9 Sep 2015

1930's Depression Era Song

I am looking for the name of a 1930's depression era popular song and thelyrics of the song is: "Give me a date and a Ford V8 with a rumble seat built
for two and let me wahoo, wahoo, wahoo."

29 May 2015

Weeks on the Charts

I am looking for a list of songs that spent the most weeks on the charts,whether they reached number one or not. Does anybody know where I can find
this i am specifically interested in 60' and 70's music... Thanks+

That is a really good question and a very hard one to answer. We've added a new
FAQ that shows our thinking, look at "Which songs spent longest in the charts?"
that will give a few lists of songs that you may find interesting (we did).

Thanks for asking that one

24 Mar 2015

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24 Mar 2015

I favour the viewpoint.

%image_title% is actually the number one.

21 Mar 2015

Garcinia Cambogia

I have been browsing online more than three hours nowadays, but I by no means found any interesting article like yours. It's lovely value sufficient for me. In my view, if all site owners and bloggers made good content as you did, the internet will probably be much more helpful than ever before.

8 Mar 2015

Regional Rankings

I understand that there is a page that lists the most successful songs for
North America and Europe, but is there enough information to divide even
further? For example, a page listing the top 10 most popular songs from
Germany for every year 1950-2009. Though an average 16 year old is listening
to the autotuned music of today, I have discovered a fondness for French music
from the 1960s and 1970s, particularly Françoise Hardy and Marjorie Noel.
With that being said, I've found it difficult to take a bigger look into this
category of music. That is why I was wondering if it is at all possible to
split up these charts nationally. Thank you.

We don't have enough data for such a fine division to be reliable. However we
do link to the charts that we use, follow the links on the "Source Charts" page
and you will find where we obtained our data.

In particular the French charts link through to pages
like http://top.france.free.fr/html/annuel/1969.htm which should help your
search.

27 Feb 2015

Aryan+

Hi. I'd really like to find a list of the best selling music artists of all time. Can you help me?+

18 Jan 2015

songs' chart peak dates

i just recently stumbled upon this jaw-dropping treasure trove for music chart
freaks like myself...i've yet to check up & down all the data here so i wonder
if a song's chart peak date is also listed here, e.g. donna summer's hot 100
no. 6 "i feel love" with a chart peak date of november 12, 1977...+

The fully correct answer is that it depends on the input chart, but for most charts
the answer is no, it only lists the entry time. The monthly "Number One" pages of
course do have that for you.

Of course we do also list all the source data locations, so, for example, you could
find that information for the Billboard charts by looking at the original spreadsheet

11 Nov 2014

Record World

Are the 1970s Record World pop chart surveys available on line or via hard copy books.
Please send me some information. +Thank you for your time and consideration.
Rocky

We have documented all we know about that chart on the "Song Charts" page, including
a link to our original source (now no longer active). In this case the WayBack machine
is your friend, try looking at (for example):

Hello. For the past 20 yrs, I've been looking for the song. I don't know the title, but only some of the lyrics. Here goes....the girls got bass....she got me spinning around, girls got bass, she got bass, she got me spinning, moving, spinning, moving... Then there is a saxophone solo at the end. The song is r&b with a tinge of hip hop, from maybe 1987-1992.+

12 Oct 2014

Just out of curiosity...

If you were to combine George Michael's solo career along with his hits with
Wham, do you know what song artist number he'd be? Same with Phil Collins and
his hits with Genesis.

No, that sounds like a hard process. Would you count Paul McCartney's
hits in The Beatles, what about Wings (and Denny Lane, and The Moody Blues).

19 Sep 2014

wasnt it you that said our love is youve gott\ me running for cover just know i love you like before i

22 Aug 2014

Song Request

+ +Song request: + Artis Zendaya +Songs Title Replay Heaven Lost Angel and Punch It down are Punch It Down

12 Aug 2014

tell me, please, how many copies it sold shirley bassey album: The Capricorn
Thank you

We don't know (and suspect no one really does)

7 Aug 2014

Looking for song from the 40s

+Answer to : I don't know the song except some of the lyrics are I'm gonna sit
down &write myself a letter. Please help me find the title & artist.

In 2012, Paul McCartney recorded an album of standards called Kisses On TheBottom, a phrase from Fats Waller's 1935 hit single "I'm Going Sit Right
Down And Write Myself A Letter". Waller's song was recorded on 8 May 1935
and went up to Num 3 in the charts.

Thanks for the suggestion

31 Jul 2014

looking for song from the 40s I think

I don't know the song except some of the lyrics are I'm gonna sit down &writemyself a letter. Please help me find the title &artist.+

Try looking harder (at the index or search bar for example)

15 May 2014

looking for a song

I'm looking for a song, but I have no details about the singer or the title, even the lyrics. the only thing I remember (from my childchood
time in the 80's) is the female choir (but not gospel)singing the
chorus and some parts of stanzas with a male lead singer. The girls
in the choir have a very high, soprano voice. The music is rather
electronic, with a characteristic regular rythm. I also remember
the video - recorded in a studio, the background and the surrounding
are grey (looks like 'foggy'), there is strong light from above, and
I guess the video was black and white at that time. It shows the choir
and the singer (or singers?). The song used to be played in the radio
around Christmas time (I don't know if it matters...).. And it's
beautiful... I'll be grateful if someone could help me. +

13 Apr 2014

I have a question+

Who was the top 2 most successful musician between the years 1946 and 1955. Thanks

The CSV file gives you the information you need to answer that
question.

Based purely on songs the top 5 artists of the period you ask about
are (in order): Nat King Cole, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Frankie Laine and
Eddie Fisher (on the 2.3.19 data)

However if you take albums into account, and assuming albums are
twice songs, the top two are Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole

So the answer depends on how you want to combine the scores, our
best guess would be Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole but with the details in
the CSV file you might come to a different conclusion.

I am trying to find a song,sung by Lou Gramm. The song starts with 'still no news from you'

Lou Gramm had 5 minor hits "Just Between You & Me", "Midnight Blue",
"True Blue Love", "Ready Or Not" and "Chains of Love" all between
1987 and 1990

27 Feb 2014

Ideas for chart inclusions

I have some chart suggestions here in case you're interested.

1.Absolute Radio - www.absoluteradio.com, Top 100 Albums of All Time
2.Pop Vortex - www.popvortex.com, The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time
3.Best Ever Albums - www.besteveralbums.com, Top 1000 Albums of All Time
4.Vinyl Surrender - www.vinylsurrender.com, Top 500 Albums of All Time & Top 1000 Songs of All Time

Generally we don't include such charts unless it is clear that they have
been assembled on a fair way (i.e. we don't like to include a chart that
is the personal selection of a few DJs or critics).

Having said that we'll look again at these and see if they meet our criteria

25 Feb 2014

It's a shame you don't have a donate button! I'd certainly donate to this brilliant blog! I suppose for now i'll settle for bookmarking and adding
your RSS feed to my Google account. I look forward to brand new updates
and will share this blog with my Facebook group. Chat soon!

We do have a donate button, but we ask that you send donations to "Scope"
or your nearest cerebral palsy charity, they need the money more than we
do.

23 Feb 2014

great site - question on top 3000

Love the site so thanks for what must have been a tremendous amount of work.
I notice, however, the order of the top 3000 isn't the same as you would expect
from the top 100 of each year, nor are the numbers the same as the CSV file
numbers. I assume that must be because they're based on a different set of
parameters. I'm guessing you've included some date in the top 3000 that may
not be a part of the yearly list or the CSV file. Would that be true?

Thanks, bob

It would.

The version numbers indicate the algorithm and data set. In the case of
the top 3000 the version is 2.1.41, this indicates the second "released"
version (i.e. it adjusts based on years to 'level out' the scores), this
was the first varient on that and the 41st set of data that those
parameters were applied to.

The current version is 2.3.09 (at the time of writing) which indicates
that the gross algorithm is the sane (i.e. the second version) but that
the parameters have been tuned twice (giving the 3rd varient) and that
this is the 9th set of data with those values.

The data value changes when new data is added or when old data is fixed.
For example if we find that the 4th & 7th song are actually the same (for
example one had the artist as "XXX" and the other as "XXX & YYY" and we
feel that both are really the same version) then consolidating these
together may mean that the result is now the 2nd song of the year. So
the first number shows that the algorithm is the same, the second shows
the parameters are different and the final one shows that the source data
has been refined. That is why the results are different.

12 Feb 2014

Italian Music

Is this the same basic answer for the French music? If not, can you help me to find it?

Your question is unclear. The listing order is based on all countries (including France and
Italy).

The location of French and Italian charts can be found by looking at the "Song Charts" page.

10 Feb 2014

Bing Crosby

It is now clear that Bing Crosby was the man.

Well he was well before my time, it appears from my research that Bing has more number One/top thirty
hit's that anyone else.

In fact no one even comes close, in addition to no one being Number One for two decades in a row.

Mr. B. Cosby accomplished the above during the Great Depression and World War Two, which is quite remarkable.

I might add that Bing was a hugely popular radio/movie star +being Number Box office from '45-'49 as well as receiving academy awards.
While, I love Elvis, the Beatles, & Michael Jackson the facts speak for themselves that B. Crosby is the MAN.

That is certainly a valid position to hold.

Our estimate is that any one of Bing Crosby, The Beatles, Elvis, Paul Whiteman, Frank Sinatra or Glenn Miller
could feasibly be claimed to be the most successful musical acts of the 20th century, depending on how you combine
the evidence. For most approaches the top act works out as Bing Crosby, The Beatles or Elvis, but the others
turn up for some metrics.

Our calculation is that if Madonna continues to be successful for another decade or so she would join that
elite list.

It depends on how you estimate success, but our numbers indicate that Bing Crosby is certainly one
of the top 3.

7 Jan 2014

French Music

Is there a way i could know what just the greatest French songs are? When I say French songs, I mean songs in French that are sung by French artists.

To know what were the biggest songs in France you should go to the French chart sources
(described in the "Song Charts" page). However, we've never had much luck getting French
charts.

To track what the biggest hits with French titles (that have been hits in other places as
well) I think you have to download the CSV file and find all the songs with French titles.

Howdy, I read your blog occasionally and I own a similar one and
i was just wondering if you get a lot of spam comments? If so how do
you prevent it, any plugin or anything you can advise? I get so much
lately it's driving me crazy so any helpis very much appreciated.

More than 99% of all the messages we get are spam. Luckily spammers are
stupid and a simple filter throws away most of it.

4 Jan 2014

Exactly where could I find this particular Weblog platform FOR www.tsort.info?
wish you all the best in 2014!

The pages on this site are generated by a VERY specialised piece of software

29 Nov 2013

Top 200 or 300 for each decade?

Would it be possible to list the top 200 or 300 songs for each decade? I have been making a YouTube series and used your website as a source (with acknowledgment of course.) It would
really help to make a downloadable file (like you did for the top 2000 artists.)

Thanks, have a good day

Actually you can do that yourself using a spreadsheet. If you grab the CSV file from
the "Versions" page, then add an extra column to give you the decade ("=int(year/10)")
then sort by the extra column and the score (deceasing), scroll to where the decade
begins and the top 300 songs will be the biggest hits of that decade.

For most decades that will work for 300 songs, for 600 songs it would be dubious.

25 Nov 2013

Sheena Easton

Hi TSort,

I downloaded your spreadsheet. I noticed that you have as one of your songs/rows:
"Sheena Easton", "Totally wired", "1980", "Peel list 2 of 1980". This must be The
Fall's song? (I'd love if Sheena had covered it though!)

Piaras

You are exactly right. That year The Fall's "Totally wired" was number 2 and
"Morning Train" by Sheena Easton was number 3, the lines must have got muddled

Thanks for the correction

4 Nov 2013

Update

Will we be seeing another update soon?

The data here is being updated all the time. There has not been a major
update in the last 3 months because we all have been busy with other stuff.

We are hoping there will be a wider update in December

27 Oct 2013

Top 1000 Artists

Who are artists 1001-1010?

Good question.

That's a surprisingly hard question to answer. The software that does the
calculation takes a number of steps to ensure a lack of bias for the top
positions and these complicate the lower ones.

By the time we get down to artists below 900 the positions are more dependant
on the details of the data available and the intricacies of the score calculation.
So the artists in positions 980-1020 vary from one version of the data to the next, so we
would not place any trust in the results.

Thank you for the site. I have looked for this kind of sites for a long time... This site is fantastic.

I looked through tsort-chart-2-2-0029.csv and I found out some data are missing in some famous artists.

For example, for Little River Band, only three songs are listed. Very famous songs are missing
(The Night Owls, Lonesome loser, Cool Change, We Two...) I think Little River Band can enter
"Song Artist 1000" whenever all the missing songs are added.

Thanks

We have 22 Little River Band songs listed in the complete dataset, they still don't make the
top 1000 (they are only just outside the top 1000).

Artists that are outside the top 1000 do not have all their songs listed, just the ones that
were big enough to make the top 100 of any year.

The reasons for this are explained in the FAQ page "Why can't I find the entry for
artist XXX or song XXX?"

24 Sep 2013

color scheme+

you should really change the backround clor to plain in my opinion

13 Sep 2013

Steve's Book

What is Steve's book about?

Look at http://dm4ep.com/

8 Sep 2013

toms outlet online

Do you mind if I quote a couple of your articles as long as I provide credit and sources back to your blog? My blog site is in the very same area of interest as yours and my visitors would
definitely benefit from a lot of the information you present here. Please let me know if
this alright with you. Cheers!

At the foot of every page it says "This data may be freely copied provided that the source is acknowledged",
this applies to the text as well

Go ahead

31 Aug 2013

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9 Aug 2013

Music by Genre

Do you guys sort music by genre? If not, do you know of any accurate sites that do?

We don't attempt to categorise popular music. We suspect
that any such efforts are doomed to failure because there
is a lack of agreement about the genres that exist.

The issue has to do with defining the boundaries, we might
all agree that a certain song is "Country" but there are
always questionable cases.

We don't know of any good sites that apply "genres", but there
is some interesting work about automated music classification
that might get there

7 Aug 2013

Name

Do you guys like "TsorT" or "Tsort" more? I was telling my friends about this site, and I'm so much of a grammar freak I want to make sure I'm typing your name correctly.

To be honest we hadn't thought about it.

The name comes from two different sources, the UNIX command (which would be "tsort") and
the country in Terry Pratchett's fiction (which would be "Tsort"). We sometimes use the
"TsorT" form to emphasise the pleasing symmetry of the letter forms (illustrated by the logo).

If we had to pick one for normal writing it would be "Tsort" (but "tsort.info" for the DNS obviously)

Interesting question

11 Jul 2013

Year Ahead

Hi, why do you list some songs a year after they were released? An example would be Bohemian Rhapsody which came out in '75 but you list in on the top
songs of '76. Why do you do this?

Our aim is to list the year a song was a hit (not the year it was released).
This is explained in the FAQ "Why is the year for XXX listed as 19XX?".

8 Jul 2013

Which English version of a French song holds the record for the most weeks within the top 40 in the UK?

Your definition is not clear, it could be "Je T'Aime (Moi Non Plus)", or "My Way", or something else

27 Jun 2013

RIAA says Elvis sold the most

While I enjoy diversity and the talent the many artists have displayed over
the years, I wanted to know which artist sold the most records. It wasn't as
close as I thought.

According to the R.I.A.A., the governing body that certifies Gold, Platinum,
and Multi-Platinum Record Sales, (Recording Industry Association of America)
the Leading all time Artist in Record Sales is ELVIS PRESLEY. Elvis is the
leading sales artist for both Solo Artist or Group. Elvis has sold over 2.5
Billion Records Worldwide. ( A Billion is 1 Thousand Million). Elvis has been
on the charts more times than any other artist or group. Elvis has the most
hits in the Top 100, the Top 40, The Top 10, and has had 32 Number 1 Records.
Elvis is the only artist inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, The
Country Music Hall of Fame, The Gospel Music Hall of Fame, and The Rythm and
Blues Hall of Fame.

John Lennon said: "Before Elvis there was nothing".
Bruce Springsteen said: "There are pretenders and contenders... but their is only one King".
Elton John said: "There is no one greater as an artist on this earth, Elvis was my inspiration... he is the Man. Period."

Paul McCartney said: "I thought the Beatles had gold records, until I had a private tour of Graceland... the hall of Gold says it all... Elvis has the most Gold, Platinum, and Multi-Platinum sales of all of us.... amazing man... simply amazing".

According to the R.I.A.A., with help from EMI, the Beatles place number 2 on
the list of All Time Record Sellers with nearly 1.6 Billion Records sold
worldwide. Hey Jude was their Biggest selling record followed by Yesterday.

Michael Jackson made the top 20, placing number 16 on the list of all time
Record Sales. His Album Thriller is the Biggest Selling Album of all time with
over 50 Million Copies Sold. Michael's personal sales as a Solo Artist, along
with the Jackson 5, has sold a total of 185 Million Records worldwide. (His
Album BAD sold 22 Million copies).

These certifications, current as of March 1, 2009. Every 3 months the
R.I.A.A., with the help of BMI, and ASCAP... update record sales awards.

So, there ya go folks. Those are the true facts. And, I might add, Elvis, the
Beatles, and Michael Jackson continue to sell records daily.

So, their record sales will continue to increase. But remember, in Elvis and
the Beatles day, you had to sell 1 million copies for a single, and 500
thousand for an album to be certified gold. Now days, you only have to sell
500 thousand singles and 250,000 albums to be certified gold. That's what
makes the sales records of Elvis and the Beatles even more impressive.

The Fans and Other Entertainers called Elvis, "The King of Rock and Roll". The
term "King of Pop" was self imposed by Michael Jackson. It stuck from there,
but Michael called himself that... that's what he wanted to be called.

The Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C., named Elvis Presley, "The
Greatest Entertainer of the 20th Century".

is it possible for the site to list some major certification organizations'(RIAA IFPI) selling data for the artists (pardon
the grammar)

Charts from the RIAA and IFPI are already included, see the source charts
page

11 May 2013

Who wants to live forever

Who wants to live forever

27 Feb 2013

THE ULTIMATE RETROSPECT

I went thru just about everything in this site- every album of every year,every artist, single etc. and Id say the #1 conclusion Ive come to is that
music started out bland but tasteful in the early part of the 20th century
until rockNroll came along in the mid 50s; it kept getting better and peaked
in the mid 60s, particularly 1966. After that it declined and has gotten worse
and worse every decade. There were many great artists in the 40s, 50s,
early/mid 60s, and the few in the 70s werent didn't have a place in the
mainstream or commercial viability. +Im particularly pertaining to artists in
these lists that were significant for whichever year, decade etc. And based
off everything I've seen and been told its seems to me that the Beatles were
the most over-rated, hyped up media affair. Im not undermining the good music
they made but it boggles my mind how they were at the top of everything when
they were in no way as great as they were perceived historically. The success
of the beatles is a combination of the brilliant production of george martin,
the consistent quality marketing of the media and the conformity of the
masses. ALL these lists really go to show that the majority of the music that
changed the world from the late 60s to the current is TERRIBLE. The music
industry declined so much in the late 60s, continued to do so in the 70s and
hasnt imroved one iota since. And this is coming from a young person under 30
who has spent their entire life absorbing every possible aspect of music
history from the artists, to the songs, to the sales, to the significance and
legacies. I apologize for being so blunt (or negative to the ignorant); please
feel free to email me if need be.

9 Feb 2013

2012?

Hi,

When will the last year's charts be ready??

Steve (who does most of the work at this site) has been
working abroad for the last two months, and also is in
the process of completing a book (which should be
out in the next two weeks)

Once the book is done we'll be able to get more of
his time

14 Dec 2012

wheels was done by the xl's. I believe the group was out of st.louis in tqthe 60's. + Wheels was on the white whale label.

The group also had a minor hit with "After The Laughter Came
The The Tears" by Patti and The XL's on Dot Records.

Thanks for the info. We have no hits that match either of them

26 Sep 2012

music in the 20th century

for an essay at the end of this term we have to answer this question 'what was the most remarkable decade in the 20th century?' we need to give reasons for
our oppinion, music might be a good thing to write about, help

You might like to look at the FAQ question "Can the charts here tell us
anything about long term trends", as well as some of the anlalysis on the
"Sales over time" section of the "albums sales" page.

Also the CSV file (available from the "Versions" page) could provide some
evidence to support whatever argument you might want to put
forward. Personally I wouldn't like to have to single out any one
decade as being "the most remarkable", I can think of good arguments to
pick any of them.

23 Aug 2012

Wheels

I'm also looking for the artist who made Wheels. The lyrics from the post on July 8 are accurate as
well as I can recall. Thanks in advance for any info.

8 Jul 2012

Wheels?

I am seeking some information about a song I think was titled "Wheels". The lyrics are (I think) "Wheels you're the ruin of me, you drove me to the end of
the line. Wheels, I lost the girl that loved me, you took me for a ride the
very last time". Help please.

8 Jul 2012

Wonderful research

I am a musician and a music teacher, and I only just discovered this site because I was annoyed about someone trying to tell me recently that the
Beatles music was crap. My argument was that on the basis of musical analysis
alone, that statement was foolish. +If you take into account their success and
popularity, it is ridiculous - your data proves it.

I couldn't help wishing that Sinatra topped the list over Elvis for artists in the
1950s though...

:D

THANKS!!!

6 May 2012

charts

hi, i noticed that it had been a long time since there had been any variations. hope
that the site is still active.

Thanks again

We're still here

15 Apr 2012

to make this wonderful site even more useful...

Hi -- Yours it without a doubt the most useful single resource for music I
have ever seen, outside of Youtube, but I very nearly did not find it. I'd
been looking for some time for a website that pooled and synthesised chart
information, and despite diligent searching only wound up stumbling on your
project through the links from another site. What I was looking for was a way
to acquaint myself with the chronological chart history of recorded music
globally, but wanted it all in one place so I wouldn't have to resort to 100
different charts, if the information could even be had. What you've done here
is just amazing.

At any rate, what I wanted to suggest was that you could make this incredible
resource even more valuable -- and avoid all the pestering from people
wondering where their favourite missing hit fits into all of this -- by
providing a catchment supplemental page for each year that holds the remainder
of the songs that didn't make your Top 100: it wouldn't even be necessary to
rank them for this to be immeasurably valuable.

My main interest is in cultural variations, juxtaposed against the big
picture. As such, I'm probably in the minority here, but I'd also love to see
a sort option that would allow you to select a country or region and see a
list of songs that only charted in their part of the world in a given year.

Obviously we list the top 100 each year because they tend to
be the songs that users are most interested in. However there
are many other advantages in adopting the structure we do.

For example by not listing all the entries in, for example, the
Billboard charts we ensure that our quoting of their data is
what is called in US law an "original work of authorship". We
quote less than 50% of their entries, so anyone interested in
discovering all the US chart entries has to do so on their site.
We obviously only cater for those that want to combine information
from many different county's charts.

In addition by focusing on the top entries we end up with only
the higher quality data.

When we check the entries obtained from the external sources we
find that they are on average about 97% accurate (that is not
obviously with inconsistent names). When we merge in another
chart there are processes that check the new entries against
the existing data, these can spot many of these types of
mismatches, provided the new songs already exist in another
chart.

The majority of song entries (about 68.1% of them) only exist
in a single chart, in other words for two thirds of the chart
entries there is no confirmation of spelling or song name.

On average we have more than 1,200 song entries for each year, by
showing only the top 100 songs we are selecting the 8% that have the most
validated entries (because their names are confirmed in so many other
charts). If we were to list all the entries then two thirds of the
entries would be uncheckable.

So for both those reasons we would need a lot more convincing before
we extended the pages.

You also suggested that we could analyse charts by region. We looked
at this when we added the "Europe v North America" pages. There is
obviously a trade-off between smoothing charts out so you get an accurate
impression across the whole world and focusing on individual territories
and getting a chaotic picture that is dominated by the "lumpy" nature
of individual charts.

We did a bit of statistical modelling trying various combinations and came
to the conclusion that we could track success for a given year in Europe and
North America, so that's why we created those pages. We also track
success in the 9 regions (shown in the profile pictures) provided we combine
entries across the whole range of years.

Both these cases have their limits, the Europe v North America pages only show the
top 20 songs, the profile pictures have obvious issues for success before
1950. Our experience has been that these "focused analysis" exercises tend to
obscure actual trends behind a flurry of accidental results (that's why we
ended up doing statistical modelling, to prove that this was inherent in the
data rather than a consequence of the particular processing we were doing).

Of course we also resisted listing number ones by date for a long time because
of exactly the same types of concern about accuracy, and glossing over the
reasons why no-one really knows what was actually number one on the 6 Feb
1952. However that now seems to be one of the most popular areas on the
whole site, most users it seems would rather have certainty than accuracy.

Have you downloaded the CSV file from the versions page? Using that data you could
do a crude version of what you are suggesting.

3 Mar 2012

Fantastic site!

Wow - what an achievement! This is my first time on this site and I don't know where to
start. My particular interest are the Billboard US charts and although I have bought
various books on US charts - Joel Whitburn in particular, I have never seen this data
electronically.

My particular question is can I download the Billboard data spreadsheet from this site
or do I need to request it from Bullfrog?

Keep up the good work. It's an awesome task which is never ending.

All the best
DJ Dan

The Bullfrog data is available from their site (on the "Download"
section). So the answer to you question is no, we won't supply
their data, but you also don't need to "request" it from them,
it is easy to download.

16 Feb 2012

New Songs, Etc.

This is an amazing site; thank you for your work! It kind of goes hand in
hand with acclaimedmusic.net, this being the one to see what was
popular at the time, etc..

Would you label yourself as the most concise
chart site/archive on the net? Also wondering if you continue to add
charts for the more recent years as you go along/they be come available
(and around when do you think viewers could expect an accurate
representation of the last few years, etc.).

Thank you
Giovanni

As far as we know we are the most comprehensive chart site on the web
(since we have 183 source charts containing 389,210 entries as of version
2.1.004). We don't think "concise" is quite the right word, the site
has more than 5,000 pages some of which list 1,000 items, in fact we've had
some users complain that there is too much information here.

You are right in suggesting that the most recent years are not yet
accurate. The way we gather data is more focused on getting history
right rather than reporting current events. Our experience has been
that 3-5 years has to go past before our pages reflect a reasonable view,
so we'd trust our listing for 2007 at the moment, be prepared to defend
the 2009 listing but have no faith in the 2010 one.

18 Jan 2012

Youtube Videos of Tsort

Hello. I'm not sure if I already sent a message over here, but I never got a
reply, so I'll try again.

I have used the music information available in this website and made Top 20
Countdown youtube videos showing 30 second clips of those videos. So far i've
done videos from every year since 1980 until 2009. You can see a playlist with
all the videos here:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL03D41B7DB0109D19

Additionally, I made a longer video showing the 1st track of every year that
you showcase, in this case, from 1900 until 2009:

http://youtu.be/9ICgfX1xuWY

I can't wait for you to upload more charts so I can get started for the years
of 2010 and 2011. Also, when I get more time I expect to cover at least until
1950 (So I still need to do the 70s, 60s and 50s, quite some work!)

I was wondering if you've had the time to see any of these videos, and what is
your opinion about them. So far, the total number of views for all
tsort-related videos is of 20348 views, but I expect to double that amount in
the next 6 months.

Cheers, and keep up the good work!

Hayen MIll

28 Dec 2011

v2

There are a lot of major changes in the latest version of ths list. Some
songs/artists have disappeared completely. Some obvious problems also. For
example Boby Fuller four I Fought the Law disappeared while the lesser known
Tennessee Waltz is still there (had a lower score in previous versions)

The Bobby Fuller Four song "I Fought the Law" was a hit in
1966, while they released the "Tennessee Waltz" in 1959. The
Bobby Fuller Four version of the second song still has a much
lower score than the first, however it is listed in the CSV file
because it is in the top 1000 song titles. We don't see that as
a "problem", it is exactly the anticipated behaviour and what someone
investigating the song "Tennessee Waltz" would want.

There were a lot of changes, that was the whole point of the new
algorithm. It addressed what we felt were some significant distortions,
such as the emphasis on European charts from the 1980s & 1990s.
We knew the results would be different, that was why the data version number
went to 2.0 (from 1.10).

The results do still have some issues, and if anyone can suggest
ways to make the results more consistent we would be very happy
to hear them, but we feel that the 2.0 data is a significant
improvement on the older set.

28 Dec 2011

"My House" by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young

I really like what you've done here. Great jog. However, I can't seem to find this song on your site, or in the csv data file I got from you. Am I missing
something? This songs was a chart hit.

However neither Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (as the artist), nor "Our House"
(as the title) reached high enough to have their own page.

28 Dec 2011

"Our House" from Crosby, Still, Nash and Young

I really like your charts. I use them all the time. I found a song you're missing. "Our House" reached #30 on the Billboard charts. Yet,
it's no where to be found in your charts.

The group "Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young" were album artist
number 248 (in data version 2.0.012), so they have a page listing
their albums. However since they were song artist number 1,365
and we only have pages for the top 1,000 artists, there is no
page for them.

The song title "Our House" also didn't make the top 1,000 titles.

28 Nov 2011

Thank you

My wife and I entertain at nursing homes. Having some artist/song information makes the program more interesting. This site as well as secondhandsongs.com
are so helpful. Thank you and happy holidays - Tom Bruno

12 Nov 2011

reshuffle

i really like this site. may i ask how come recently a reshuffle in the top lists occured

The way we calculate the scores was changed quite radically last
month. That is why the data version number went from 1.10 to 2.0

The reason for the change was that some users pointed out some
anomolies in the way songs from the 1990s were ordered. Particularly
music that that had success in the USA but didn't do well in Europe.
We modified the scoring system to overcome some issues with
having too many charts from smaller countries.

The first attempt introduced some other unwanted features
so the algorithm has been further tuned. We hope that the
overall result is a better.

The Details - best albums from 1957, 1963 to present at www.thedetails.co.uk

We'll have a look at them, thanks for the suggestion

PS: We've examined both these sites and decided not to add them.

The "Village Voice" critics seem to be typical of attempts to identify "the best"
music, rather than "successful" music. Now we have no issue with that approach
but this site attempts to focus on music that was, and continues to be successful,
rather than telling users which music they "should" be listening to.

We have added this chart as a contributor to the details, so users can see
what this critic's view of each album was, however we've ensured that this
does not affect the overall score.

The other site you mention has to be rejected for two reasons, firstly because
it is a single critics list (the 1965 list, for example, has two Dylan albums
in the top two slots). But more importantly we already have far too much chart data
from the UK, for some reason the people of Britain are more prolific than any others
in sharing their musical knowledge (of course we are UK based, so part of the same
phenomenon). The volume of evidence we have for the UK for this period is already
more than sufficient, until we have more data from Asia, Africa, Central & South
America, and even from the USA, we don't want to add any more from the UK.

26 Sep 2011

Celine Dion

Don't you think that Mrs Celine Dion is a bit OVERrated in your site?? Cause from where i see she is above Michael Jackson, Phil Collins and Queen even in
some Entries...

In the best list, that is the "All Time Music Act" list we have: Celine Dion 49th,
Michael Jackson 19th, Phil Collins 44th, Queen 17th. In the Song Artists lists we
have Celine Dion 47th, Michael Jackson 5th, Phil Collins 28th, Queen 13th. In the
Album Artists lists we have Celine Dion 14th, Michael Jackson 10th, Phil Collins
29th, Queen 12th.

So in the main lists she's below all the acts you mention except that she
is noted as having more overall album success than Phil Collins.

The only main listing where she's above those acts is in the "Success in the 1990s"
chart. Which, given the number and success of her albums and songs in that
period, looks like a valid measure to us.

On the "Number 1s" page her song "My Heart Will Go On" is listed as being
number 1 in more charts than any other song. But that just reflects the fact
that we have more charts for 1998 than we do for say 1982 or 1976.

We feel that all three of those charts are somewhat questionable, being
all time charts based on "listner votes". However our instinct is to
include charts unless there is a good reason for not doing so.

We've added the charts, but made it so they don't contribute to the overall
score (the positions are noted on the entries of course).

Thanks for the suggestion

25 Sep 2011

Billboard info for songs listed from 1901 - 1929

Hi, again, this is my fifth time sending message to this site...What a
spectacular site. Love it!! First, the comprehensive info, then, the
nitty-gritty details on every songs. Thirdly (and most importantly) the forever
responsive reply. Irregardless its a meaningful questions, corrections or
downright simple questions.

Some sites don't reply at all..its annoying.

Anyway, my questions is during the period from 1901 to 1929, has billboard
exist yet? Do they have charts and radios doing the counting of the song
rotation? I thought billboard only start in the late 50's, wasn't it? I'm a
music aficionado, songs and info from the 30's is hard to find, and yet you
have the effort to go beyond the 20's.. May i know where in other sites i can
search for 20's music info (other than wiki)?

Arnaz

We're glad to see that you enjoy the site. Your comments encourage us to
keep putting in the effort.

To answer your question:

Billboard magazine started publishing in 1894. They published their first
music "hit parade" in 1936 and their first "Hot 100" in 1958. We understand
that from 1936 to 1958 the charts were irregular and didn't have a consistent
form. In addition the focus was on "sheet music" sales so while the chart
will say, for example, that the song "Sentimental Journey" was a hit in
1945 it won't tell you if the version by the Merry Macs, Hal McIntyre or
Les Brown & Doris Day was the most popular.

A US music historian called Joel Whitburn has used the information from
the irregular charts, the Billboard magazine contents and other sources to
retrospectively calculate the charts from 1890 to 1958. This is published
as a spreadsheet by a guy calling himself "Bullfrog" (the source is listed
in the chart entry).

That is the listing we base our information on.

11 Aug 2011

Many, many thanks!

I just time travelled! I made an MP3 album of one song only from each year of
the 20th century, from 1901's "In the Shade of the Palm" by Harry MacDonough
to 2000's "Californication" by Red Hot Chili Peppers, 100 songs total, and I
couldn't have done this without this website's help!

The goal of this playlist wasn't to capture THE number one hits of every year
as some songs were pretty far down on the list, but they had to be songs I
personally liked (and I loved every ONE of them), and they had to define the
time period they were in, of course. The goal of this project was to
experience the evolution of music through the twentieth century, from the
ragtime days, to the flapper days, to the blues days, the big band days, rock
n' roll, ballads, classic rock, disco, new wave, rap, alternative, and heavy
metal. I have had the last two days of work off and feel like I just got back
from a long time traveling trip doing this! I have fallen in love with genres
of songs I have never liked before.

So what is my favorite song from the 20th century? I'd have to say "Blue
Skies" by George Olsen & His Orchestra (1927), and that's coming from someone
born in 1984!

Your website and list of songs have helped me immensely. Again, many thanks!

Fantastic, that's exactly the type of project this site was designed to
support. We especially like the idea that you selected your "best" song
from every year, rather than just going for the highest scoring one. That
forces you to sample a few and reject some of the inevitable dross that was
highly placed.

It would be interesting to see your playlist

21 May 2011

Year of this song by The Merry Macs

Help me, please, I want to know when "I get the blues when it rains" was
realased by The Merry Macs.

Thank you for your atention.

That song was not a hit, so we have no entry for it. Of
course the "Merry Macs" did not do well enough to get into
the top 1000 artists, so we don't have a seperate page for them.

However they had hits from 1939-1945, almost all listed in the
Billboard chart from Bullfrog. We would suggest that you want
to follow the link on our "Source Charts" page and download
Bullfrog's excellent spreadsheet.

22 Apr 2011

This is without a doubt one of the most interesting sites I've ever found.

Any plans of, maybe, tagging artists or songs with info on genre, recording
medium, etc, to allow for more insightful analysis? It would be interesting to
compare the most successful songs within a specific genre or medium. Might
the song and artist pages be linked with info on other sites, such as
Wikipedia, Youtube, or specialized sites like redhotjazz.com?

That certainly sounds like an interesting idea. For our own music collections
we use this data in combination with sources of lyrics and cover art to
add extra value. We also use the charts to generate playlists (for example
containing all our songs that were top 10 hits in Europe in the 1980s).

We would be interested in discussing ways to expand the data we hold, or for
others to exploit the data we publish with anyone who wants to get in touch.

21 Feb 2011

List for 2010

Hello, very impressive work, I found many classic songs here, Thanks!
When can we see single list for year 2010?
Thank you.

Thanks for the encouragement.

There is always a delay between the end of a year and when we can start
collecting the data for it. To be honest we wouldn't have complete
faith in our own listings for any period less than 5 years old, the
data is too recent for our data analysis approach.

However we'll be adding a 2010 listing in the next few months.

29 Dec 2010

Wikipedia

Hello, great site, currently used some of the chart info for
wikipedia however some other contributors believe this
site is not a valid source of chart positions. Any way I
can prove this site is valid, what sources does this site
use? Thanks.

All the charts used on the site are listed on the
"Song Charts" page (or "Album Charts" page), most of
them linked to original sources.

We have seen some places where people claim that
the data quoted here is invalid. Usually such comments
have come from sources that don't provide any
better data and often claim that "my private data shows
the tsort site is wrong" and then when asked refuse to share that
data or say where it came from.

If anyone makes a constructive suggestion we will normally
consider it. We can do little about the people on the internet
that feel it is easier to criticise our site anonymously than
to offer suggestions to us for how to improve it.

There are also fans of particular
artists who believe it is valid to assert "your site says my
artist had fewer hits than a rival, therefore it is wrong",
there is little we can do (or wish to do) to break their
self delusion.

We've not seen anyone on Wikipedia claim that our data is wrong
and should not be used. If you know of a page where that is being
claimed we'd like to know about it so we can contribute to the
discussion. There are many Wikipedia pages that do use this data,
anyone saying you shouldn't is, we suspect, in the minority.

Our position is that a link on each artist's Wikipedia
discography page to the matching page here would be helpful
to most Wikipedia users. Of course Wikipedia's "Conflict of
Interests" rules mean that we wouldn't add such links ourselves.

Of course the suitability of this data for use on Wikipedia varies,
for example the description of the "Global" chart explains why
that data shouldn't be quoted there. The charts from Poland, France
and Brazil should probably not be used, but the US, UK and Australian
charts are definitely the best available.

20 Dec 2010

Thanks, but Woody Herman got shorted.

I just discovered your site and am sure I will benefit
from it often in the future. However, I notice that for
Woody Herman, you list only "Blues in the Night." Woody
had a number of other chart hits, including especially
"Woodchoppers Ball" and "Laura." "Laura" sold a million
for sure and I think "Woodchoppers Ball" did also.

Regards,
William L Rupp, Fallbrook, California

Woody Herman has his own page (you can get to it by clicking
on his name, via the "Song Artists" list, the
alphabetical list of artists or the
site index). It lists more than 70 of his hits
(including all three you mention).

We notice that we have have entries for both
"At the Woodchopper's Ball" and
"Woodchopper's ball" which we'll obviously fix in the future.

17 Nov 2010

Amazing

I've been an oldies collector for years, but I've never found such a
comprehensive site like yours.

I'm an application developer myself, one of the oldest who are still active,
so I can write C# and Xaml better than English. Therefore, I can't find the
right superlatives that you deserve, sorry.

One last question: How do you, as all the other code gurus, find the time to do what you do? I've so many unfinished projects on my disk, several
uncompleted sites on the Internet, and plans for the next 25 years.

Thank you for your kind words.

We also have a lot of unfinished projects and indeed this data collection
is being improved all the time. The most important factor is project
time, the main code behind the project was created in 2006-7, based on an
original piece of software Steve created in 2002. The most recent
extension was written last weekend. The site you see is the result of
input from a group of people over the period of a number of years.

We are lucky that we can clearly seperate the code, which Steve does,
from the data fixing, which is done by everybody.

13 Oct 2010

Where can I download the CSV-File

Wow, what an amazing Website. Congratulations. The best I've ever seen !

Just one question: where do I find the CSV-File you mention ?

There is a link to the CSV file on the "Versions" page. If you
follow the link at the foot of every page (the words "version number")
you will find the page.

11 Oct 2010

Your web site.

Just a note to thank you for all the hard work that has gone into
constructing this site. I am a music collector in the UK who
loves chart information.

Your efforts are truly appreciated

Kind regards - Gerald Thorburn

Thank you

6 Sep 2010

About the site

I have to congratulate to you all for this great work. Very impressed

8 Aug 2010

These entries look duplicates (v1.9.0047. Haven't checked if it was corrected in v67)

{List of more than 30 Corrections with artist name, title and year}

Wow, what an excelent list of potential corrections, a couple of the items had
already been corrected. With one exception the remaining ones have now
also been done.

The only one we didn't do was The Isley Brothers, you suggest that
the 1964 song "Who's That Lady?" is the same as the 1973 song
"That Lady". As you can see from the Wikipedia article at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Lady,_Pt._1_%26_2 the story is
a bit more complex. The underlying song is the same but the group
deliberately gave it a different title when they re-recorded it
in the 1970s. Its a tricky question but we have decided to
keep the titles distinct.

The rest of your suggested changes are clearly correct. Finding these
types of mismatches between charts is one of the most difficult tasks we have
to perform, so your list is very welcome.

Thanks for the input

20 Jul 2010

What an impressive site. Thank you for a fascinating source of music history.

1 Jan 2010

who sang this song?

Hi I'm looking for this song I heard it around 1993 and it goes like this,
you said you had to leave yeah cause things won't work out so what
does that have to with me if i was to much then daddy you should have a
child it life responiabity to me you desert us , why daddy did you leave
me oh we cried every other day tell me why daddy did you leave me but
daddy it over now we'll see brighter day

No idea, never heard of it

28 Oct 2009

search engines

When you are looking for a song, or an artist to listen
to their songs, why not have a clip or the whole song.

We don't host any actual music here at all,
obviously hosting complete songs would be illegal and we
don't need that hassle. We don't host clips because
we don't have the time to collect them, we don't have
the bandwidth to deliver them and we don't think it
would add much to the site.

If anyone would like to collect, manage and host a set
of music clips we would be interested to discuss how
we could collaborate.

4 Jul 2009

Server Error

I keep trying to send you a message but the web site complains about a "server error"

Yes, one of us made a mistake while blocking spam messages from
Russia 10 days ago. It has now been fixed.

And yes it was me

Steve

2 Jun 2009

Andrews Sisters

Corrected? I still see them both (now #35 and #36).

What we meant was that the data was corrected in the source data set,
it obviously takes some time to "publish" from the source to the web
pages. The processing alone takes about 16 hours.

In addition for the last couple of days the result has failed some
of our quality tests, so we have had to correct some elements and
resubmit the job (which adds another day).

The data should now show the correct values.

2 Jun 2009

Andrews Sisters

Corrected? I still see them both (now #35 and #36).

What we meant was that the data was corrected in the source data set,
it obviously takes some time to "publish" from the source to the web
pages. The processing alone takes about 16 hours.

In addition for the last couple of days the result has failed some
of our quality tests, so we have had to correct some elements and
resubmit the job (which adds another day).

The data should now show the correct values.

26 May 2009

Thanks for clarifying that, although I'm not quite convinced when I look at
the already existing Bing Crosby collaborations for example. Anyway it's okay
for me with the newly added comments on the Ella Fitzgerald page.

I got another one: #34 ("Hold Tight, Hold Tight", 1939) and #35 ("Hold Tight,
Hold Tight (Want Some Sea Food, Mama?)", 1938) on the Andrews Sisters' page
and is the same song and the same record, released at the end of 1938 and
charted in the beginning of 1939, see the record label on
http://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/andrews_sisters/hold_tight__hold_tight__want_some_sea_food__mama_____billy_boy/
(which also shows that it was a collaboration of the Andrews Sisters with
Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra).

Corrected, thanks again for the info

23 May 2009

Sugestion

Hi! Great great job! Thanks!!!

It would be very nice if you could do it with separate continents. It
would be very interesting to see how the order of the songs would vary
on different sides of the planet!
Different Cultures = Different Music "taste".

Just an idea...

p.s. - pardon my english! :) (by the way, i'm from Portugal)

Interesting idea.

For that to work we would have to have more than one input chart in
each region, with enough entries to "smooth out" the peculiarities
of any one chart. The bad news is that we don't meet those criteria
for most of the World, or for any data from before 1950.

However we have had a go at adding such pages, if you look at any of
the year pages for 1950 to 2005 you should find a link that will
show you the results.

Thanks for the idea

PS. Your English is much better than our Portuguese

19 May 2009

A-Tisket A-Tasket Again

Thanks for fixing the "A-Tisket A-Tasket" entry. I'd say however that the
correct artist specification for this record would be "Chick Webb & Ella
Fitzgerald" (with a link to Ella, the same way as you did with some other
collaborations, e), not just Ella Fitzgerald.

Regards
Cornelius

You make a valid point, there certainly is a good case for listing it under
"Chick Webb & Ella Fitzgerald". However, many sources list
the song under just "Ella Fitzgerald" (possibly because she co-wrote it),
there is no separate page for Chick Webb on the site and the
"Chick Webb Orchestra" was renamed in 1939 as
"Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra" (after Chick Webb died) so we
decided to assign this song to "Ella Fitzgerald".

The goal of this site is to consolidate the range of input charts, this
often means that we have to "standardise" names. For example some
artists have different names in different countries (like "Yazoo" or
"The Detroit Spinners"), some artists change names from one year to
the next (like "Prince"), or for a particular song (for "(Meet) the Flintstones"
"The B52s" became "The BC52s"). Mapping the actual names on the
record labels or printed charts to a "most common form"
makes it easier for users to find connections between charts, if they
then use that information to track to the original chart data they will find
the original information and can decide if our consolidations are valid for
their purposes.

A note has been added to Ella Fitzgerald's page to explain the situation,
this also means that anyone looking up Chick Webb in the index will
be directed to the right place as well.

Thanks for the input

8 May 2009

A Tisket A Tasket

Thanks for this great site that I must have overlooked for a considerable
time. There are some mistakes of course, e.g. Ella Fitzgerald's "A-Tisket
A-Tasket" (#8 in the 1938 chart) is the same record as Chick Webb's (#26 in
the year chart) because she was the band's singer at the time and Joel
Whitburn is always listing the bandleader and the featured singer. Here you
can see the label of the original 78 rpm record with both names on it:
http://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/chick_webb__and_his_orchestra_/a_tisket_a_tasket___liza__all_the_cloudsll_roll_away_/

Best wishes from Germany
Cornelius

Thanks for the correction, the data has been fixed. That type of
issue is the most difficult one to spot.

16 Apr 2009

Other

Cool site

Thank You

16 Aug 2008

A couple missing

Hi. Great site. Just started looking at the csv file. I noticed
"Oh Lonesome Me" by Don Gibson is missing. It reached 7 on the US BB
charts, and may have charted on others. Also two songs by Adam Wade
from 1961: "The Writing on the Wall" (US BB 5) and "Take Good Care of Her"
(US BB 7).

Roger

According to my list Don Gibson's "Oh Lonesome Me" entered the
Billboard chart in Mar 1958 peaked at number 8, and was there for 21 weeks.

But neither artist did well enough internationally to be in the world's top 1000 artists. This site
only lists the most highly placed acts (all the hits of the top 1000 artists, the top 1000 song
titles and the top 100 songs of each year)

If you look under the title "I Can't Stop Loving You" you will see that Don Gibson's version
was number two in Norway in 1960. Adam Wade is listed as having the least successful version
of a song titled "Crying in the Chapel".